In a recent survey 44% of small business owners reported being unhappy with the performance of their employees.

To solve this type of problem, small business owners must first identify the cause and then create applicable solutions. There can be many reasons why employees under-perform and some leaders may point to poor attitudes, low motivation, low morale and individuals’ inability to work with others, or accept and adapt to change.

Although those reasons may be valid on the surface, there are always underlying issues that have led to the causes identified by the business leader.

The good news is that there are only two aspects to evaluate with under-performing employees. It’s either due to an individual’s:

ability, or

their attitude.

In either instance, the employee is not at fault.

(If you’d like help distinguishing whether its an ability or attitude issue and the communication issues that may have caused it and how better communication can fix it – let’s have a conversation. To schedule a free, no obligation Workplace Communication Assessment Strategy Session, go here now)

There are three primary communication mistakes business leaders make that prevent employees from being engaged in their workplace and contributing at higher levels:

Business Leader Mistake #1 – Not Giving Employees a Reason to be Engaged, Motivated & Contribute

Many business leaders mistakenly believe that providing someone the privilege of a steady income and certain quality of life via a paycheck should be enough to create a motivated employee.

Yet, studies continue to show that salary and benefits, although important for providing base levels of motivation, is not enough to generate higher levels of engagement.

Many managers and leaders say they are frustrated with the feeling they have to continually find ways to light a fire under their people to get them to do what needs to be done. Instead they should be investing energy in connecting to their employees on a personal level to instead find ways to light a fire within them.

The Employee Motivation Equation begins with creating an inspiring vision for the company that employees at all levels will be excited to contribute to. Daniel Pink, in his 2010 book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us identified “Purpose” as one of the key motivating components for a 21st Century workforce.

Business Leader Mistake #2 – Creating a De-Motivating Environment

In any new relationship there is always a honeymoon period where all the parties involved have good feelings about the possibilities moving forward. It’s the same when a new hire joins a company.

Unfortunately, a survey of about 1.2 million employees at mostly Fortune 1000 companies in the early part of this century conducted by Sirota Survey Intelligence, and revealed in 2005 that in 85% of companies, employee morale sharply declines after an employee’s first six months on the job, and continues to fade in ensuring years.

In a significant number of companies, as this Sirota research shows, something is occurring in these work environments that causes an enthusiastic and engaged employee to change their attitude.

Many factors can be attributed to this drop off, some of which include:

Managers that play favorites and communicate disrespectfully in the workplace,

Lack of positive feedback for contributions made

Business Leader Mistake #3 – Making a Wrong Hiring Choice

In the haste to fill positions, often those making the hiring decisions fail to invest enough time in making sure the new hire is a good fit for the position.

A “good fit’ includes assessing skills, knowledge, attitude, talent, and the education and experience a prospective team member will bring into the work environment. I call this the S.K.A.T.E. Hiring Profile (Skills, Knowledge, Attitude, Talent, & Education/Experience).

Additionally, sometimes due to unforeseen circumstances employees are asked to fill roles not originally intended, and for which their skills and talents are not the best fit.

In these situations, despite the employee’s best efforts he or she is unable to meet desired performance expectations, causing both the employee and the employer become disenchanted with the relationship. Yet, the onus must be on the employer to get it right when inviting someone into his or her work culture, and when asking a team member to take on additional work responsibilities.

What You Can Do

Before proclaiming employees are unmotivated, and/or unwilling, to perform to expectations and bring positive attitudes to the work environment start evaluating these three workforce mistakes from an organizational leadership and communication perspective to see where there is room for improvement.

Remember that it comes down to only two causes. It is either an ability problem or an attitude problem. too many times training and coaching are provided as solutions to an attitude problem, which is a huge waste of resources. As you might imagine, fixing an attitude problem is much different, and much harder, than an ability problem, in most cases.

Here are 3 steps to get you started:

First step is to get clarity there.

Second, once you make that decision, know that for whichever you choose, the foundational cause of that situation is some form of communication.

Third, decide on the best way to approach the situation and the individual.

(If you’d like help distinguishing whether its an ability or attitude issue and the communication issues that may have caused it and how better communication can fix it – let’s have a conversation. To schedule a free, no obligation Workplace Communication Assessment Strategy Session, go here now)

There is also no guarantee high-performing results will be the outcome of this model. There are too many external factors impacting those results, but the opposite IS true.

There can be no high-performing results from your team if this model breaks down.

This model breaks down when communication does not support the building of trust. This is especially important to understand because there are only three potential outcomes when you communicate and two of them (or 66%) either slowly erodes trust, or instantly destroys trust, with those with whom we’re speaking.

As a leader for your company, here’s a great way to accelerate the development of higher levels of trust:

Bring your team together for a meeting where you facilitate a discussion on improving communication. Everyone will agree it can always be better.

Shift the gravitational pull of the conversation away from the flow of information regarding who gets what information from whom and when, to impersonal communication and how individual team members can communicate more effectively between each other to build higher levels of trust.

Introduce my model of “The 7 Deadliest Communication Sins.”

Tell them you know you, personally, can improve your communication skills in each of these seven areas and you’d like their help.

Have the team each identify just one of the seven that they think would be best for you to start working on.

Have them answer for you, either in writing or in person (non anonymously, promising no repercussions or negative impact) these 3 questions:

What must I stop doing?

What must I keep doing?

What must I start doing?

7. Review the feedback, decide where to start, then tell everyone on the team you want both positive reinforcement when they notice a change for the better, and you want them to point out
times when you engage in communication that fails to meet the new standard.

This activity will have an immediate impact on the level of trust between you and each team member in specific three ways:

It will give you direct feedback on ways you can become an even better communicator and leader.

It will show a humble, vulnerable side of you that will transform your relationship with them forever.

It will open team members to accepting appropriately presented constructive feedback from you when you need to offer it because you have led the way

Your ego is going to resist this exercise.

It is going to be hard.

It is going to stretch your comfort zone like few other activities.

It will make you a better leader, it will bring your team closer while building the higher levels of trust you need create outstanding results together.

After my seminar at the Project Management Institute’s Austin, Texas Professional Development Day last week I had the privilege of meeting one of my seminar attendees, and his wife who met him after the conference.

A discussion ensued about the strategies in my seminar he 7 Deadliest Sins of Leadership & Workplace Communication” settling deeper into the topic of Lack of Focused Attention because my seminar attendee’s wife, a successful realtor in the Austin area, mentioned she has a strategy for respectfully interrupting people when she calls them.

Since I often learn from my seminar students I was very open to learning a new strategy to borrow for my trainings.

She proceeded to tell me, “whenever I call someone and I feel like I may be interrupting them I want to make sure I’m respectful, so what I say is…

“Did I catch you at a bad time?”

After hearing her suggestion, I said, “that’s a good way to do it, and I’m wondering if you would be open to an even better way?”

She said, “What do you mean?”

I said, “well, your approach is good up to a point and what it does is plant the suggestion that it is a bad time for them to speak with you. That language violates another of my communication sins, ‘A Lack of Desirable Behaviors.’

“What you want to say instead, to plant the suggestion that it is a good time for them to speak and allow them to feel more positively inclined to be comfortable with the interruption, is this…

“Is this a good time for us to speak?”

Basically, the same question, asked with the same intention, and focused on the positive outcome you desire.

Language like this is, positive focused, very influential and will lead your subject to fulfill your request much more frequently.

It will also build your reputation as an influential communicator, show yourself as a peer of whomever you are calling and build trust with everyone with whom you are trying to get their attention.

This simple shift in language is another strategy to make you a power communicator.

You have the power to influence stakeholders at every level in your sphere and you don’t even realize how simple it can be.

All you need to do is change your lazy language in the following manner:

“I need this as soon as possible,” becomes “I need this before 5 pm Friday.”

“Get back to me on this when you can,” becomes “Please get back to me on this before noon Thursday.”

Communicating this way articulates expectations at the time of making the request to give both parties certainty and a framework for accountability. The fulfillment of the request becomes a building block towards a trusting relationship.

On the flip side, when others make a request of you, change these common phrases this way:

“I’ll try to get to it this week,” becomes “I’ll do it and I can get it to you by noon Wednesday.”

“I’ll get back to you as soon as possible,” becomes, “I promise to get back to you before 5pm today.”

Communicating like this does two things:

sets clear expectations on the front end so both sides know what is expected of each other.

sets a standard you have committed to and need to live up to maintain your integrity.

One of my clients had a senior team member admit in a meeting I was facilitating that he couldn’t communicate this way because he didn’t trust himself to be able to live up to the higher level standard.

If you want to be a person of influence, with a reputation for getting things done and following through on commitments, its time to raise the bar by using more power phrases like this in your communication.

To build more power communication skills and habits, check out Communicate to Influence Up, Down & All Around 2.0, my newest tele-class training that launches soon, learn more and get a significant early registration discount at www.CommunicationPowerForLeaders.com/influence

Yesterday, an employee of the convention center, whose name was Eileen, came up to me as I was cleaning up after my presentation at the conference I was speaking at.

She said she heard some of my talk while she was working around and beside the room in which I was speaking and she wanted to grab the list of my “7 Deadliest Communication Sins.”

As I was putting my things away I gave her one of the handouts so she could take notes as I went down the list.

When I got to #4, which is “A Lack of Respectful ReBUTals,” I explained to her that it meant we should avoid disingenuous phrases that incorporate the word “BUT” when offering feedback to people or when in a discussion or debate on issues, such as “That’s a really great idea, but…”

She said, “that’s right, because ‘behold the truth, it comes after the but!’ She told me that was something a teacher told her many years ago.

That is so true!

What you really believe comes after the “BUT.”

Which means, whatever comes before is negated and worthless.

In applying those phrases, which we do to try to be supportive and non-confrontational, we create negative energy and feelings in the other person who does not feel supported when the other side of the statement hits them between the eyes.

I love that phrase, “behold the truth, it comes after the “BUT.” I will be using that in my future talks, for sure. Thanks, Eileen!

On Monday, at another training, one of my seminar participants was very familiar with this strategy,. He understood its power in communication and helped me in my discussion of it.

This workshop participant, whose name was Jeff, not only reinforced the strategy of replacing BUT with “AND” as the transitional word, he was very articulate in telling the rest of the audience of 50 business professionals that it is a very, very challenging communication skill to incorporate.

Jeff reinforced that it takes tremendous, conscious forethought to craft your language in such a way that it fits with the “and” transition to provide a truly supportive and reinforcing statement that builds trust and provides a foundation on which the conversation can move forward in a positive manner.

So, this is a “thank you” to both Jeff and Eileen for adding value to my work, and making my programs even better, plus a “thank you” to all my workshop participants for allowing me the privilege and honor of giving me their valuable time and attention each time.

An article in the Wall St. Journal the other day (see The Biggest Office Interruptions Are…) reminded that many of my clients who own businesses with employees to manage struggle with interruptions throughout their day.

These interruptions come in all shapes and sizes from handling a disgruntled customer to dealing with a personal emergency to answering questions about simple job responsibilities the employee was supposed to have learned to do on their own months ago.

As I speak about in my seminar on The 7 Deadliest Sins of Leadership & Workplace Communication “A Lack of Focused Attention” continues to create challenges with communication as people try to multi-task while communicating.

These interruptions kill productivity in the workplace. The Wall St. Journal article discusses both research as well as practical strategies for dealing with these distractions more effectively.

Great leaders, the ones that communicate to develop effective teams that generate revolutionary results, are masters of strategically and courteously addressing interruptions while also triaging them so distractions are limited.

If you’d like help in this area, which includes building up your team to be more effective and confident in running your business at a level you can trust, here are two things you can do:

Read the Wall St. Journal article, which has a couple of outstanding tips near the end, and

’til next time, leave a comment below and make it a great weekend as I travel to Tampa, Florida and Buffalo, NY to speak at two professional development conferences for project managers (PMI Tampa) and human resource professionals (NY State SHRM)!

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